Prepare Ye the Way

If it was legal, I would post a music clip from Godspell right here--a man's solo voice singing "Prepare ye the way of the Lord..."

As of yesterday, it's Advent again! Only four weeks until Christmas. Not long to prepare.

I think I am going to decorate this year. I want to be a part of the seasons, of the repetition we've created to make order. I want to make my own order.

Tonight, a friend asked why God would create such hopeless lives. And I told this friend what I truly, truly believe: our lives are not hopeless. God creates only things with a future, and it is up to us to fulfill that future. If we are lonely, hopeless, depressed, this is because we are not doing something right. This is not God's fault.

Hope. Fulfillment. God.

So here is another one of my favorite poems that I have turned to often since I first heard it during an important two weeks that helped form my life.

Annunciation
by Denise Levertov

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc


We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

____________________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

______________________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.